Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/141

 IV.

MELANCHOLIA.

have considered ancient poetry, the Hebraic and the classic, from which we so largely Subjective undertone of later epic masterpieces. derive, finding even in that of the Augustan prime a marked departure from the originative temper of the earlier literatures. Centuries afterward, in Persia, the "Shah Nameh," or Book of Kings, furnished a striking instance of heroic composition: the work of a royal genius,—Firdusi, whose name, signifying Paradise, Firdusi. was given him by the great Mahmoud because he had made that Caliph's court as resplendent as Eden through his epic of "Rustem and Sohrab," his song of "the rise, combats, death" of the Parsee religion and nationality. To produce an epic deliberately that would simulate the primitive mould and manner, in spite of a subjective, almost modern, spirit, seems to have been the privilege of an Oriental, and, from our point of view, half-barbaric, race.

The strength of the Homeric poems and of the sagas of the North betrays the gladness out of which they sprang, the joy that a man-child is born into